Europan 8 proposes 75 sites in 19 different countries, which composes a greater Europe with original dimensions, integrating as well Cyprus and Turkey.

This generous offer is done to encourage the young architects of this "old" continent to develop their ideas and to make known them on the European scene, on International scale. Europan wants also to help the implementations of the most innovative architectural and urban approaches which will be proposed in the contest.

Through the transversal topic, the 8th session takes into account one of the principal common stakes of the European urban development, beyond their diversity : the research of a renewed urbanity, claimed by the urban decision makers and awaited by the users.

Eminently political question concerning the culture and the society, urbanity is also a topic of reflection for the professionals. They have to think it as a common way of experiencing the city and its functions without neglecting the rich heterogeneity of its forms. This reflection quite naturally inspires the will to give to public space the specific - and so important - role it plays in the European cities : to favouri encounters among people in places they share and they can invest together.

This collective function of public space is not sufficient to counter the contemporary tendency to individualisation and to the protection of the private and domestic scale. Indeed, in their great majority, the citizens want a sort of personal autarky, they grant to share with their own family.

Such is the contradiction EUROPAN try to manage : the users want at the same time to enjoy of the city, with all that it brings of public animation, collective life and protective anonymity; and, at the same time, but in an opposite movement, to preserve their own privacy and their own "between oneself" family. This double and contradictory demand can not be satisfied on a housing scale only. It is necessary to propose a larger solution, sublimated in fact. That is why the competition Europan is between the construction of buildings and the urban planning, on a scale able to let emerge a extremely desirable competence : the capacity of architecture to impact urbanity.

Such an extension of the field of application makes it possible to gather the sites by families. This thematic classification is used as a connection between the cities, developers and young designers confronted with the same problems, but with different points of view. It creates a better clarity of the issues of each of the sites for competitors and thus, ideally, the establishment of a network between cities concerned to exchange their respective experiments.

While launching Europan 8, we make a double bet : on one side, we count on the young professionals of design, who will take part in it with energy, to show, once again, their talent and imagination. And, on the other side, we count in the success of projects most carrying urbanity linked to the specific contexts.

Good work - and good luck - to you all.